The Effect of Conjunctive Use of Fresh and Saline Water in Sistan Region

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Graduate Student, Department of Water Engineering Zabol University

2 Irrigation and Reclamation Eng. Dept., Zabol University, Zabol, Iran

3 Irrigation and Reclamation Eng. Dept., Tehran University, Karaj, Iran

Abstract

Sistan region located in Southeast, Iran is one of the many places that are badly in need of special policies for water resource management. Conjunctive use of surface plus groundwater is a common way of an integrated water resources management. The aim followed in this study is to evaluate the strategy of conjunction of saline subsurface water with fresh surface water (Hirmand River) in Sistan region. To achieve this, an experiment was performed within a randomized complete block design of five treatments and three replications on sorghum on the experiment al field of Zabol University located in Sistan dam area within spring of 2013. The fresh and saline water samples required for the experiment were provided from Hirmand river (EC= 1.2 dS/m) and a well existing on the field (EC= 15 dS/m), respectively. Treatments consisted of; control, irrigated with one-half of salty water, alternation in time, mixed vs completely salty water. The studied traits were comprised of the biological attributes of sorghum as well as salinity changes within the soil profile. The analysis of variance showed that there are significant differences (p<0.01) in dry weight of stem, leaf and aerial organs of the plant, plant height and leaf area index for all the treatments.  Following, control the one-half salty treatment, with an increase of 75.8 % in leaf dry weight and 55.3 % in weight of aerial organs (in comparison with the completely salty treatment) presented the most appropriate performance. Also, a comparison of soil profile salinity prior to, and after the experiment showed that all  the foresaid treatments caused an increase of salinity in all the soil profile layers (except for 80-100 cm layer for which, the salinity was affected by the water table). The results of yield components and soil profile salinity showed that for the crop sorghum an alternate use of saline and fresh water (alternate time treatment) is more appropriate than a mixing of them. Therefore in such regions as Sistan plain with scarce fresh water, the methods of one-half and alternate time could be employed for irrigation.

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